Lankan regional business leaders on Australian business visit

A group of regional business leaders from economically marginalized parts of Sri Lanka are scheduled to visit Australia later this month to link up with Lankan immigrants there for trade and export purposes.

This visit is facilitated by International Alert in collaboration with the University of Queensland and the Australia - Sri Lanka Council Inc. in Australia.

The regional business leaders represent different geographical clusters in Sri Lanka and are Directors and senior representatives of the Business for Peace Alliance (BPA). The BPA in a press release said it is committed to regional empowerment, the fostering of non-violent resolutions of community-level conflicts for a climate conducive to economic development and the promotion of better corporate social responsibility at regional level.

The regional business leaders will be accompanied by big corporate business and other resource persons, the statement said.

“Considering that 51% of Sri Lanka’s GDP is coming from Colombo and the balance 49% from the rest of the country, it is clear that greater attention should be paid to development of areas outside Colombo with active regional involvement. The private sector can play an important role to address such regional and structural disparities and to strengthen recovery capacities in all parts of the country,” it said.

The current visit, the BPA said, was aimed at forging trade links with Sri Lankan businessmen in Australia. In addition, several Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives of the business community in Sri Lanka will be presented as options for collaboration.

This includes the “Learn and Lead” scholarship scheme which is designed to provide education in leading private schools in big cities in Sri Lanka such as Kandy, Colombo, Galle and Jaffna, for bright under-privileged children from disadvantaged regions. Students from Anuradhapura, Trincomalee and Badulla will benefit from the scheme in its initial phase.